Tryptich
by lurknomore
Summary: Nikolas, Elizabeth, and AJ: three minds, one moment. A look at the hug that launched a love triangle.


Disclaimer: GH is owned by not me. All dialog in italics/quotes is from an episode of GH.

Author's Note: Damn you Becky Herbst, and your crazy chemistry with Tyler Christopher and your growing connection to Sean Kanan.

"_I love you, Nikolas"_

The words drift through the layers of muffled pain and pull him towards … something. He knows that voice: he hears it so often in his dreams. Is this a dream? It doesn't feel like one. Nightmare, perhaps: there is pain, the kind of pain he knows comes from serious injury, but it's dull, muffled. He tries to open his eyes, but they are weighted and he can't. He mutters her name, and gets no answer. The pain increases, and he retreats from it. He falls back under.

"_I love you, and I miss you."_

This time her voice is louder, stronger, and the pain has receded further. He holds on to her words and to the hand holding his. Nikolas knows her hand, her voice, and they pull at him. He has to open his eyes, to see if she's real, and not a figment of his imagination. He's dreamt so often of words like this, this hand, this voice…and woken to emptiness. Crushing emptiness, loneliness, guilt - and want. So much want. He wants her, needs her, misses her… and she's never there. This time, though, it feels so real, and the pain is there and different from the pain of her absence. And that's new and different and oddly makes him think that this time, it might be different. Makes everything seem more real, and he needs to know for sure if it is not. He opens his eyes.

And there she is. Elizabeth. Her hair is darker, he thinks irrelevantly. But other than that, she is as just as he remembers. Dreams. No, he's wrong: she's so much more than he remembers. More beautiful, more desirable; warmer, softer, and more luminous than ever: his Elizabeth. She's smiling at him, relieved, and he is so ridiculously happy to see her again, live and in the flesh and here with him.

"_Hi."_

God, he thinks, it is so good to hold her. He burrows his face in her hair, inhaling the sweet scent of her skin, and wondering if he can ever let her go again. Doing the right thing – leaving her in Port Charles with Lucky, free to work things out with his brother the way she said she wanted - was one of the hardest things he had ever done. And now, holding her, Nikolas isn't sure he has the strength to walk away from her again. He knows he doesn't have the will to do so. Not now, and not ever.

But all of that is for later. Now, he just holds on.

"_Hi Elizabeth"_

It's been so long since she's seen him, heard his voice. Her first glimpse of him last week - clinging to life and covered in blood - terrified her. She was convinced she was going to lose him for good, and she cannot lose anyone else she - cares about. The past few days, as he's lingered in a coma, Elizabeth has thought so much about how they parted, and how her actions almost destroyed them all, and the regrets have almost choked her. The battle between regret and fear has been more draining than she would have believed possible. But now he's here, awake, and his hand is warm in hers, and the reassuring beat of his heart is steady under her palm. Now she can't think of the pain she caused him and Lucky and herself; she can only look into his eyes and be extraordinarily grateful that he's here with her, and not gone, like so many others.

"_I assure you my heart is fine."__  
_  
But the way he's looking at her unsettles her: she has seen that look from him, before, or hints of it, and it led to some difficult times for them both. Liz isn't comfortable labeling anything other than Jake's death 'the worst time of her life', but that crazy affair with Nik was the beginning of a long, sad period for her, one filled with many emotional highs and lows - none of which she is anxious to revisit. But as she rests her hand on his chest, feeling it rise and fall so steadily – solid, real, and such an integral part of so much her life – Elizabeth feels something that isn't as simple friendship or as uncomplicated as relief. And when he reaches for her, she reaches back. His head nestles in against her neck, and she can feel him breathing in her scent, the same way she is breathing in his (spice, sandalwood, overlaid with the medicinal smells of GH), and her eyes close. She has missed him so much. She doesn't know what they are to each other anymore, but Nikolas Cassadine feels like home to her in a way she has never been able to define to herself, let alone anyone else. And she is not sure she is ready to deal with that. She may never be ready to deal with that.

"_Please. Where else would I be?"_

But for now, she just holds on. He's here, he's alive, and it is so good to hold him again. The rest will come soon enough.

"_AJ, you can regret a relationship and still be invested. You can still be vulnerable." _

AJ shouldn't be in this part of the hospital. He has a meeting scheduled with Ellie, and her lab is on another floor entirely. But he wants to see Elizabeth again and just be there for her: to make sure she knows that he cares about her welfare, and that he's thinking of her. And he wants to see her smile, too. Elizabeth has been one of the few consistent bright spots in the crazy adventure of his return to Port Charles, and he needs that today.

That need has nothing to do with Monica's warning about Nikolas Cassadine, or the look on Elizabeth's face when she told him of her tangled history with the man he remembers as Emily's Prince, and how it destroyed her relationship with Lucky. Why should it?

AJ's clearest past memories of the four of them are as teenagers: Emily, Lucky, Elizabeth, and Nikolas, tearing around the mansion and having adventures. He knows they had difficulties even then, and their lives weren't easy, but that's not what he sees when he looks back. He sees Emily and Liz laughing, Lucky teasing, and Nik too - a slightly older, more cultured presence than the other three, and one who was endlessly patient with Emily's crush on him. He knows they all grew up, and that relationships between the four became more complicated as they aged. But it's hard for him to reconcile the pretty, laughing girl of the past with the beautiful, sad woman telling him a story of love, desire and infidelity. He was telling the truth when he told her that he couldn't judge her, that his own mistakes are so great he has learned to live and let live.

But he wondered then how strong the pull between Nikolas and Elizabeth must have been: how fierce the passion burned between them, that they so recklessly risked everything for it and lost. And now, with Monica's words echoing in his ears, he wonders how much of that pull and passion remain. AJ can fight ghosts – his own, Elizabeth's. He's used to that. He's gotten good at that. But fighting a living, breathing past… AJ isn't sure that plays to his strengths.

He approaches Cassadine's room, hoping to catch Liz on a break and make her smile. He raises his hand to knock and stops, arrested.

Nikolas is awake.

And Elizabeth is in his arms.

The two of them are oblivious to anything except each other. There's nothing sexual in what he's seeing, AJ knows that. The man just woke up from a coma, for God's sake. But there is something… powerful there. Cassadine is curled around her, smoothing his hands down her back: and Elizabeth is nestled into him, running her hands through his hair. They touch like old friends, and old lovers. Even if Elizabeth hadn't told him of their past, he'd have seen it in the way they touch. They make a beautiful couple, he thinks irrelevantly.

But the aesthetics don't concern him.

Elizabeth and Nikolas both look… peaceful. Happy. AJ has never seen Elizabeth this happy or serene, not since his return to Port Charles.

He backs away, troubled, leaving them alone. This, he thinks, is going to be a problem. But not now. Now, he has a meeting to go to. He will figure out how he wants to handle what he's seen. Later.


End file.
